My fellow Catholic Crunchy Cons, just a reminder: today's feast of the Immaculate Conception is a Holy Day of Obligation which has not been abrogated (because it never is, not even when it falls on a Saturday or a Monday). Tonight I will join our parish choir for the singing of such lovely hymns as "Hail, Holy Queen" and "O Sanctissima" during this evening's Mass.
As a Catholic, the idea that we should honor Mary for her special role because it pleases her Son when we do so is something that makes sense to me. No, Catholics don't worship Mary; worship is given to God alone. But we admire her, look up to her, try to consider her example, and ask her to pray for us, just as we might ask someone on earth to pray for us.
As for today's feast, it celebrates the Catholic teaching that Mary, from the first moment of her conception, was kept free from the stain of Original Sin. While this teaching has been expressed beautifully by Catholic artists in many forms of art, including songs and paintings, I think that one of the most beautiful was written by William Wordsworth, who was a member of the Church of England, not a Catholic:
The VirginMother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied.
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!
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"Thanks, Philip. I see the logic there. I could never bring myself to pray to anyone but God, though."
Another John: Here is more to consider. First, as Catholics we believe that when we die in Faith we have eternal life. That means death no longer exists for us. So to ask a saint, a person who by definition is not dead but rather living in God's presence, to pray for us, is akin to YOU asking your friend/family to pray for you. So when a Catholic hears someone say "I could never pray to someone other than God" we know you don't understand. "Prayer" is "talking" so every time you are praying with someone you are are "talking." For us, it is irrelevant that we cannot see the Saint or God because Faith gives us eyes. Those who live in God, time stands still. Space and time have no meaning.
I am a convert by the way. And the Communion of Saints is the glue that keeps me going. I love that God allows us to pray for each other.
That is Catholic theology for you.
Another John, I could never bring myself to pray to anyone but God, though.
Sure you could. Have you ever asked someone to pray for you? Your own earthly mother, perhaps? When Catholics "pray" to Mary, that's all we're doing. Asking her to intercede for us with her divine Son. You may, for instance, be familiar with the final words of the Hail Mary: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."
Now, if you'd ask your earthly mother to pray for you, why wouldn't you ask your mother in the order of grace to do the same?
In a strict sense, the adoration that we give to Mary and the saints is ultimately adoration of God anyway because that which we celebrate in the lives of the saints is their very godliness.
I thought it was a bit odd quoting Wordsworth's poem. Was he even Christian? - he might have returned to Anglicanism in old age, but, judging from most of his poems, his beliefs were in the pantheist-neopagan spectrum. He was also a fervent supporter of the French Revolution - surely the beginning of the end from a palaeoconservative perspective (??) - and had several children with his French girlfriend.
Wordsworth got more 'conservative,' both politically and religiously, as he got older. A comparison of the 1805 and 1850 versions of "The Prelude" bear this out. Some critics, especially those of a modernist or liberal tendency, don't like his later poetry, saying that the quality of his writing faltered. Seems to me, however, that it's not so much his poetical skills that changed, but his outlook on things, which affected both how he wrote and what he wrote about.
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